"I don't think Jack O'Connell's ever been mentioned on the
list before yesterday."

O'Connell's been mentioned a number of times. (Ironically
enough, one of those mentions was in a post of yours, Bill, a
call for papers you forwarded for an issue of Paradoxa he
edited.) I just tried to search the archives for the posts
and found that if I search under Jack O'Connell, the engine
drops the apostrophe and comes up with nothing. However, if
you drop the O altogether and search under Jack Connell, you
will find a number of comments.

Bill went on to ask:

"What's the best book of his to start with? I see BOX NINE,
WORD MADE FLESH, WIRELESS, and SKIN PALACE by him. Are there
any others?"

I agree with Jim that they are best read in order. It is not
a series in the sense of revolving around a steady cast,
unless you count the city of Quinsigamond as a cast member.
In many ways, the city is the main character of all of these
books.

I also agree with Jim that there is a great progression in
the series, with each book adding more levels to the
storytelling. Box Nine is the first, and most seemingly
orthodox (especially when compared to those that follow),
offering the somewhat stock character of the hardass female
cop who is dabbling in things she shouldn't. Still, what
O'Connell does with her in particular and the book in general
is far from normal genre fare.

And it just gets weirder with each book.

Jim added about O'Connell:

"He told me that when he finished [his latest book], he said
to his wife, "This one's really strange" -- and that she's
still laughing."

Stranger than Word Made Flesh? That's hard to imagine, and
something to look forward to. Jim mentioned that he reads
O'Connell's books as soon as they come out. Word Made Flesh
is the only book I can think of that I ordered from the UK so
I would not have to wait the months before it was to be
released in the US.

Mark

--
# Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up.
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .